


oh, baby, i am a wreck when i'm without you

by sxntiago



Category: Brooklyn Nine-Nine (TV)
Genre: Angst, Case Fic, F/M, Kidnapping, basically just a whole angst fest, im bad at tagging oops, jake peralta is missing
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-10
Updated: 2020-12-10
Packaged: 2021-03-10 06:34:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,877
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27990102
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sxntiago/pseuds/sxntiago
Summary: When Jake doesn't return home one night after work, Amy is left to try to put together the pieces of his disappearance while caring for their young son. Can she and the squad solve the case and find Jake before it's too late?
Relationships: Jake Peralta/Amy Santiago
Comments: 10
Kudos: 47





	oh, baby, i am a wreck when i'm without you

**Author's Note:**

> hi! 
> 
> long time no write! i know i have two other long fics in progress and i promise i will continue and complete both of them, but i just couldn't get this idea out of my head and i figured it was probably better to give you guys something rather than nothing at all.
> 
> i really hope you're all doing well and that this fic can bring you some happiness, even if the subject isn't all that happy (i mean, i'm sure we'd all be distraught if jake really went missing).
> 
> enjoy!
> 
> oh, and i have no idea how to write children, so i'm sorry about that <333

Amy Santiago glances up at the clock nervously. She stands in the middle of the kitchen in the apartment that she shares with her husband, leaning against the countertop and clutching a steaming mug of decaffeinated tea in her hands.

The clock shows that it is six-fifty-five in the evening, which is strange because Jake was supposed to be home twelve minutes ago, and he is _never_ late in coming home anymore. In fact, now that Amy considers it, she realises she can’t actually think of a time in the last two and a half years that he’s walked through the door even one minute late. If anything, he usually arrives home _early_.

“Mama?”

The voice comes from her right side, so innocent and sweet that it makes Amy feel like her heart is melting. She feels a weak tug on the hem of her jumper and a small hand being placed on her thigh.

“Hi, baby,” she says softly. With a smile, she places her mug on the countertop and turns around to scoop her son up into her arms. At just over two years old, he is still light enough to lift but just heavy enough to pull a small huff of effort out of her as she straightens her back out and places a kiss to his forehead.

Mac giggles happily but reaches up to rub at his eyes with his hands balled up into fists. Amy notices the pink tinge to his cheeks and frowns.

“You’re tired, huh?”

He nods, pouting his little rosebud lips. “Want daddy.”

Amy places him back down on his feet and ruffles his dark hair. He gazes up at her with wide eyes that make her feel like she is the most important thing in the world. “Daddy will be home soon.”

Mac stares at her for a moment longer before shrugging his shoulders. “Okay,” he says, and then he toddles off in the direction of his toys that are laid out on the living room floor in front of the television that plays kids cartoons quietly.

Glancing up at the clock again, Amy lets out a sigh. Seven o’clock. Jake always comes home in time to help bathe Mac and put him to bed with a storybook (right now, they’re reading _Harry Potter and the Philosophers Stone_ , even though Amy has repeatedly told him it is much to advanced and violent for a two-year-old). He would never intentionally miss out on time with the two of them.

Still, she’s sure that he must be fine. He’s probably just gotten caught up on a case like he used to do in the old days and lost track of time. He’s bound to be okay, but regardless, the thought of not knowing where he is or if he’s _safe_ makes Amy’s stomach turn.

She pulls her cell phone out of the pocket of her hoodie. No missed calls. No texts. She presses Jake’s number, listens to the line ring out and then lets his answering machine message play out in its entirely before she hesitantly hangs up. Quickly, she taps out a text to him and sends it, asking him where he is and when he’ll be home.

It doesn’t deliver.

Amy stares at the text for a few seconds longer, swallowing nervously. Then, with a quick shake of the head to clear her thoughts, she tucks her phone back into her pocket and heads through to the living room.

She peeks her head round the living room door. “Come on, Mac. It’s time for a bath.”

Mac looks over at her from where he sits on his playmat, holding two model dinosaurs. He laces his dark eyebrows together, looking equal parts confused and upset.

“Daddy’s running late,” Amy explains with a sigh, smiling sympathetically, “but we are gonna have _so_ much fun together.” She holds her hand out for Mac to take. “Come on. Let’s go.”

After a moment’s hesitation, Mac stands up and bounces over to her on wobbly feet. He takes her hand, but he looks horribly unhappy about it. Amy tries not to be too offended. He has spent all day with her after all. He just misses his dad.

“That’s my boy,” she says, leading home down the hall and into the bathroom.

Bath time plays out as it normally does, but it is much more boring without Jake to splash toys around and make beards out of bubbles, not only for Mac but for Amy as well (she would never admit it to Jake, but she rather enjoys his evening antics, especially when he makes their son shriek with laughter). She tries to entertain Mac as best as she can, but it’s been a long day and she could never be as entertaining as Jake is, especially with the pit of worry about where her husband might be growing deeper and deeper in her chest.

“Where’s daddy?” Mac asks curiously as Amy tucks him in and then perches herself on the side of the bed.

“He’s with Uncle Charles,” Amy lies, and she isn’t even sure why. She _could’ve_ just told Mac the truth, could’ve told him that Jake was busy at work, busy catching bad guys like the superheroes the little boy loves so much. It’s not even like Jake being late is anything to worry about anyway. She has to remember that at one point, and not even that long ago, this was a completely normal thing for Jake to do on a regular basis, at least once or twice a week. “He’ll be home soon, baby. Let’s read, okay?”

Mac watches her like a hawk as she picks the _Harry Potter_ picture book up from the bedside table and opens it to the bookmarked page. She locates the beginning of the chapter and begins to read.

“Daddy does voices,” Mac quietly interrupts her almost as soon as she starts talking.

Amy chuckles, looking up from the book to raise one eyebrow at her son. “I bet I can do the voices better than daddy does.” She knows, of course, that there’s no way she can do a better Severus Snape impression than Jake can, but she can’t help being competitive with him sometimes, even now that they’re married with a child.

She jumps back into reading the story, and it becomes apparent almost immediately that Mac certainly does _not_ think her voices are even remotely as good as Jake’s, never mind _better_. When he finally stops huffing over her poor acting skills and she stops giggling at his moody, tired face, she manages to get through about four pages of the book before Mac’s eyelids start drooping and she closes it over quietly.

His sleepy eyes shoot open straight away. “More,” he whines. “Want more book.”

“It’s time for you to go to sleep, little man,” Amy says softly, reaching up to stroke Mac’s cheek gently. “Daddy will read more to you tomorrow. How does that sound?”

“More?”

“Yeah. Tomorrow.”

Mac yawns, and the corners of Amy’s mouth twitch up into a smile.

“Night, mommy,” he murmurs, his eyes falling shut.

“Night, baby,” Amy says softly, leaning in to press a long kiss to his forehead. “I love you.”

Mac never replies, because by the time she pulls away, he is already asleep. She smiles, even though she is a _little_ bit jealous over how easily he seems to drift off to sleep. She places another kiss to the soft skin of his forehead and then, as quietly as she can, she leaves the room, turning the lamp off as she goes so the only light in the room is the glow of the nightlight next to the tiny toddler bed.

Upon entering the kitchen, she spots the long forgotten, and now cold, mug of tea she left on the counter earlier and groans. As she pours the drink down the sink and rinses out the mug, she glances up at the clock worriedly yet again.

It’s seven-fifty, officially making Jake over an hour late.

She pulls her cell phone out of her pocket and checks it once again. The screen is still void of notifications, and when she tries to call Jake, she gets no answer for the second time tonight. This time, when his answering machine message ends, she takes a breath and begins to talk.

“Hey, babe,” she says, trying to sound at least somewhat cheery. “Where are you? Mac missed you tonight. _I_ missed you. Just… give me a call when you can, okay? I love you. Bye.”

With a sigh, she hangs up and tucks her phone back into her pocket on the way through to the living room.

She waits on the couch for an hour. Then, when the hour is up, she waits for another one, watching some silly reality television show she’s never watched before just as an excuse to wait up for Jake. She spends most of the time trying not to stare at the door, hoping he’ll walk through it before she can’t stay awake any longer.

At ten o’clock, she checks her phone again. Still nothing but a blank screen staring back at her; a blank screen that makes her stomach drop almost painfully.

Fifteen minutes later, she finds herself in bed, laying flat on her back and staring up at the white ceiling. He must have fallen asleep at the precinct. He used to do that a lot, fall asleep on the breakroom couch, especially when he was working on a big case. Is he working on anything important just now? Amy can’t remember. He must be though, to have fallen asleep at work, or maybe he’s staying with Charles, or Rosa, or Terry.

She sends a text to all three of them, asks them to let her know if Jake is with them, tells them to ask Jake to call her.

Rosa replies almost instantly. He isn’t with her.

Charles and Terry will be asleep by now, or at the very least, in bed. She shouldn’t expect an answer from them until morning.

A little hesitantly, she places her cell phone on the bedside table, turns off the lamp, and rolls over, pulling the blankets over her. The room is lit up rather eerily by the glow of the moonlight, and Amy stares out the window into the darkness until her eyes can no longer stay open, which isn’t very long after a day of caring for a toddler.

Even as she drifts off to sleep though, she can’t help but think about Jake again. He’ll come home during the night, she decides. When she wakes up, he’ll be by her side. He always is.

* * *

Amy is awoken in the morning by the sound of her alarm. Almost immediately, as if by instinct, her hand snakes over to the other side of the bed, her fingertips seeking Jake’s warmth. When she is met with nothing but a cold mattress and empty air, her eyes shoot open, her heart feeling like it might be about to leap out of her chest.

Well, it’s official. Jake didn’t come home last night.

Still half asleep and with a sense of dread washing over her, Amy pushes herself into a sitting position and grabs her cell phone and shuts off her alarm. Jake still hasn’t called or texted, but she does have two texts, one from Charles and one from Terry, both confirming her deepest fear. Jake isn’t with either of them.

It’s seven-thirty. One and a half hours before Jake’s shift starts and, more importantly, thirty minutes before Captain Holt will arrive at the precinct to start todays paperwork. All Amy has to do is make it through the next half hour and then she can call Holt and confirm that Jake did in fact sleep in the precinct last night.

Feeling more awake than ever despite waking up less than five minutes ago, Amy climbs out of bed and creeps down the hall. Mac is a light sleeper, and he doesn’t like to take naps throughout the day, so she and Jake always try to keep him asleep for as long as possible in the mornings.

In the living room, she locates a blanket that she wraps around her shoulders to keep her warm, and then she heads to the kitchen to make herself a coffee. She opens the cupboard to get the coffee, but the hot chocolate that Jake and Mac like to drink is in the way and she can’t reach her coffee on the back of the shelf, even when she stands on her tiptoes. As she leans over the countertop for leverage, she knocks the fruit bowl down. It makes a loud bang as it hits the ground, and she winces.

“Shit,” she mutters, scrambling to pick it up. “Fuck.”

She freezes in place as she hears the sound of tiny feet tapping on the hallway floor. It isn’t long before she feels a presence behind her, and when she turns around sheepishly, Mac is standing in the kitchen doorway, his hair ruffled and his face groggy with sleep. Even if he has awoken a little bit earlier than she would’ve like, she can’t stop the smile that spreads across her face when she sees him.

“Morning, Mac,” she says, pulling the blanket from her shoulders as she walks towards him. She bends down and places a kiss to his head as she wraps the blanket around him. “Did you have sweet dreams?”

“Mhmm,” Mac replies with a nod, and tilts his head so that Amy can kiss him on the lips.

“You hungry?” Amy looks back in the open cupboard and spots a box of pancake mix. “Let’s have pancakes for breakfast. Can you say pancakes, Mac?”

“Pancakes!” Mac cheers, bouncing up and down on his tiptoes before rushing over to Amy’s side.

Amy ruffles his hair. “Clever boy.”

By the time Amy cooks up the pancakes and serves Mac a plate in his highchair, the time has is only just showing eight o’clock. With butterflies in her stomach, she moves out into the hall, close enough that she can watch Mac as he ditches his blue fork and starts to use his hands to shovel his pancakes into his mouth, but far enough away that he can’t pay _too_ much attention to her phone call.

Holt picks up the phone after two rings.

“Sergeant Santiago,” he greets her. “Good morning.”

“Good morning, sir,” she says politely, watching Mac and playing with the hem of her pyjama shirt anxiously. “I was just wondering… did Jake sleep in the precinct last night?” She pauses, but Captain Holt doesn’t answer, so she decides to elaborate on her question. “He didn’t come home last night, and he’s not with any of the squad, so I just…” she trails off. “Is he there?”

Amy can tell by Holt’s silence that Jake is not, in fact, in the building. She swallows, her mouth suddenly much too dry.

“Sir?” Amy squeaks out. “He- he isn’t there, is he?”

“How quickly can you get down to the precinct, sergeant?”

* * *

“Thank you so much for watching him, Karen,” Amy sighs with gratitude in her voice, handing Mac’s backpack over to her mother-in-law who accepts it immediately.

“Oh, it’s no trouble at all,” Karen says with a warm smile, glancing down at Mac (who is already hugging his leg after exclaiming Grammy, his nickname for her as soon as he caught sight of her). “I could never say no to watching my favourite little guy.”

“I wasn’t expecting to be called into work today,” Amy says, in way of an explanation. What she has neglected to inform Karen, however, is that her son is, for all intents and purposes, missing. “I’ll pick him up as soon as I can.”

“Don’t worry about us, Amy. We’ll have fun.”

Karen gives Amy a hug before she leaves, and then Amy says goodbye to Mac with a tight hug that makes everything feel okay for the few seconds that her son is enveloped in her embrace. She tells him she loves him, kisses him on the head, and waves to him as she drives off. He and Karen both wave back.

As soon as she is out of their sight, Amy feels her happy, strong façade crumbling. She blinks back the tears that suddenly blur her vision and swallows down the lump in her throat that threatens to dissolve into a flood of tears, and she tries her hardest to focus solely on the road stretching out before her.

Why the hell didn’t Jake come home last night, and where could he have gone? He would never leave her. He would never leave his _son_. She knows him better than anyone, and she knows for one-hundred-percent certainty that he would never abandon them.

So then, where is he?

“Keep it together, Amy,” she whispers, reaching up to wipe away the few tears that have escaped her eyes and are now rolling down her cheeks. “There has to be a reasonable explanation for this.”

By the time she reaches the precinct, she has managed to calm herself down enough with deep breathing that she can jump straight out the car after parking on the street (because going into the parking lot will take much too long). She walks quickly towards the entrance, locking the car as she goes, and tries to ignore nauseous feeling in her stomach.

When she steps out of the elevator onto the fourth floor of the precinct, she isn’t prepared for the sight of Jake’s empty desk, untouched since presumably yesterday. It hits her square in the chest, and she has to stand still for a moment, taking a long breath to compose herself before she marches through the bullpen towards Captain Holt’s office.

Amy pushes into the office, forgetting all her manners and not even bothering to knock.

“Jake’s not here,” she states breathlessly. She’s not even sure why she says it really. She wasn’t actually expecting him to be here, was she?

Holt stares back at her, looking wholly unbothered. “No. No, he is not.”

“Oh, God,” Amy murmurs, running the palm of her hand over her face. “This is bad.”

“I think so too,” Holt admits. “Close the door and take a seat, Santiago.”

Amy does as she is told, pushing the door closed behind her and then flopping into the chair across from Captain Holt. “Where could he have gone?” She asks, more to herself than to her captain.

“Do you have any ideas?” Holt asks.

“No,” Amy says. “None.”

She feels helpless in admitting it, but it’s the truth. He’s not at home, he’s not at the precinct, he’s not at any of their friend’s homes, and he’s not with his mom. There’s no where else he could be, no where else he would go, especially without letting Amy know first.

Holt nods. “We should conduct a search of the surrounding area and attempt to find some signs of Jake in the immediate vicinity.”

“Where do we start?” Amy asks nervously.

“We should begin by searching the precinct building, and then we should work our way out,” Holt says nonchalantly. “However, we must stick together.” He pauses, his gaze meeting Amy’s. “I do not know for sure, but this situation could be dangerous.”

Amy shudders, tries not to think about what kind of situation Jake might’ve gotten into. “Let’s go.”

They start by searching the fourth floor of the precinct, even though they both know they’re not going to find him there. Amy searches his desk while Captain Holt checks the storage closets, and she tears up at the picture on his desk. It was taken on Mac’s first Christmas, and he looks so tiny in Amy’s arms, and her head looks so comfortable resting on Jake’s chest, his arm wound round her waist.

_There’s no use getting emotional, Amy,_ she reminds herself. _He’s going to be just fine._

Amy and Holt meet back up in bullpen after Amy has checked all of Jake’s desk drawers for clues as to where he might have gone, and Holt has searched the precinct.

“Where now?” Amy asks, crossing her arms over her chest and looking to Holt for guidance.

Holt is silent for a moment, as if considering the question. “I think the parking lot might be a good place to search next.”

Amy nods in agreement, and they head to the stairs at the back of the precinct, the only way that the multi-story parking garage where Jake parks his car can be accessed. They travel there in silence, and Amy checks her cell phone on the way to see that Karen has sent her a photo of Mac playing with some of Jake’s old toys. She smiles for a moment before remembering how completely in the dark they are, and then she stuffs her cell phone back into her pocket as her face drops.

The first thing Amy sees when they enter the parking lot is Jake’s car. She purses her lips, feeling Captain Holt’s slightly concerned gaze on her, and says, “I’ll look over here.”  
“Be cautious, and stay close,” Holt replies with a nod, and heads off in the opposite direction.

Amy watches him walk away before she slowly heads over to Jake’s car. She peers inside and sees his usual coffee cup and half-eaten croissant left there from yesterday. With a sad smile, she presses her hand up against the window, wishing that he were here with her, wishing that he’d just come home last night.

“Detective Santiago!” Captain Holt yells from what sounds like a fair distance away, but it’s loud enough to snap her out of her thoughts and make her jump. The slight sense of urgency in his voice sends a wave of panic through her body.

“Yes, captain?” She waits a few seconds for an answer before starting to move in the direction of his voice. “I’m coming! Hang on!”

When Holt doesn’t reply, Amy breaks into a light jog. She spots him on the other side of the parking lot, standing completely still, and she rushes over to him, her heart pounding harder and faster than it ever has before.

“Did you find something, sir?”

Holt doesn’t reply, and it’s only now that Amy notices the look on his face. Is he… scared? Her blood turns to ice in her veins at the realisation (because Captain Holt doesn’t get scared) as she comes to a halt a few metres away from him. His eyes drop to the ground between them, and her gaze follows his, and for a moment, she could swear her heart stops beating.

“What… what…” she trails off, unable to finish her sentence, because right there, laying on the ground in front of her, lie Jake’s cell phone and badge, arranged perfectly and completely untouched as if placed there only moments ago. “What the hell?”

“Santiago,” Holt says calmly, and Amy wonders how he manages to stay so collected in situations like this. Her gaze travels up to meet his. “It is time to call the rest of the squad. I think Jake may have been _taken_.”


End file.
